San Francisco Boy

I Write the Subject Lines

I'm really good at it, in fact.

Managing direct eMarketing at two Bay Area companies with different businesses and audiences—McAfee (consumer security) and Mindjet (information visualization), I've seen my subject lines serve and tempt tens of millions on opt-in lists of customers, subscribers, prospects and newsletter readers across the Americas and Asia-Pacific.

My preferred calls to action were eCommerce-focused: Act Now! upgrades, Buy More at the Store! cross-sells, Last Chance! renewals. But I also wrote more tempered SLs for apologies, newsletters, auto-reminders ("drip, nurturing campaigns" in marketing automation parlance), surveys, virus alerts, order confirmations and product announcements. Fortunately, I generally had free reign to craft the messaging—ideal as I'd usually written (and led the design of) the email creative—concept to ready-for-sending.

Intimacy rules, folks!

A/B testing, trial and error, spam scoring engines, open rate and delivery monitoring, and in-the-trenches-gotta-make-the-quarter-numbers urgency ("Greg, send something now!" a pacing McAfee executive often cried...) taught me what works (direct, wit, offer, benefit, expiry, common sense), what doesn't (bland, dull) and what might (long and short).

What Works

1. The Basics. Choose active, direct verbs ("Order new McAfee VirusScan, save 20%!"), single benefits ("Share maps with friends in seconds with new MindManager 8!"), and consistent naming for recurring content, e.g., subscriptions ("Mindjet Newsletter: Introducing Mindjet Connect", "McAfee Newsletter: Why You Need a Firewall"). Adhering to these principles netted me regular 20-25% open rates from customers and subscribers.
2. Expiry date with countdown. These build momentum, for example, to offer end: "14 days left to save $20 on Mindjet Project Bundle," "7 days left to save...", "3 days left...", "Last day...". Even with this mini-carpet bombing frequency, I've seen open rates hold and not degrade.
3. Witty-not-cute topicality. "Here's your Mindjet economic stimulus package!" consistently beat all contenders for open rate king during the several months the Federal Government kept that phrase hot.
4. Hyping $10 or even $5 savings on multi-year SaaS subscription renewals: "Get $10 early bird savings on anti-virus, firewall protection!" Engaged, locked-in customers already see their investment's value; greater savings is a no-brainer in their minds. Lead with that.
5. Business-like, Just-the-facts-ma'am! transactional information. Especially issues related to orders, billing and future activity. For example, "Service Notification: Your McAfee subscription expires in 7 days!" can't help but raise attention. Privacy note: Labeled as such, service notifications generally get green lighted from legal to be sent to customers who have opted out of other marketing communications.  
6. "Apology", "Come Back" or "Last Chance" for unhappy or former customers. They pay attention, especially immediately after the incident, issue or even cancellation. In fact, the highest open rate I ever saw for an offer hit 40%, from former customers who cancelled their security service less than seven days prior.

I'm Not Sure

1. Subject Line length. I've seen long and short win out. Personally, I prefer a 54- to 56-character length, so the entire subject line fits in most inboxes for easy reader skimming. Tip: Front load the most valuable text: "Our firewall protects your digital information from hackers".

What Doesn't

1. Red flags for spam blockers. "Free!" (I used it once in six years), multiple exclamation marks, misspellings, bad grammar, misused apostrophes, obscure references, all CAPS, bad punctuation—especially in combination. I recently squirmed at this doozy: "Hear several CEO's talk about CLOUD COMPUTING!"
2. Dull, tired, limp. Off my watch, I've also winced at vanilla SLs like "Mindjet Product Announcement", which silently scream "Ignore me!" Better: "It's Here: New MindManager 8 for Mac!"
3. Testing, testing and more testing to prospects. Marketing counterintuitive, but metrics bore this out year after year: the needle rarely budges once a baseline open rate (e.g., 10-15%) establishes. Less engaged trial downloaders (or older, expired trial users) simply aren't tickled by price, savings, relevancy, topicality or urgency. 
4. Subject Line by Committee.

And in the End

Best subject line I never sent: "Buy our anti-spam product. And we won't email you again about it!"

MindManager 8 Upgrade Email

I wrote the sell copy for this agency-supplied design. Gotta love the top-and-bottom flanking blogger quotes helping drive the upgrade call to action.

eSecurity News e-Newsletter

I drafted and edited a quarterly e-newsletter for McAfee consumers, mixing product news, timely security updates and current direct marketing promotions. Newsletter deployment was synced with global email calendar so it didn't disrupt ongoing eMarketing promotions landing in newsletter subscribers' inboxes.

VirusScan Plus Upgrade Email

Copy-dense but seriously benefit-rich, one of my favorite hard-sell eMarketing campaigns I crafted for McAfee consumers.

Love the jambalaya of corporate crimson 'n' black, product iconography, red-highlighted "what's new" features for skimming eyes, feel-good seals of approval and offer expiry date snipe. Note the "always-on service" sidebar, aimed at weaning customers at the time from a downloadable product model toward a service platform, a prelude to The Cloud.

 

Personal Firewall Plus Auto-reminder Email

One in a seven-part marketing automation series sent to McAfee service subscribers, this countdown-style renewal email emphasizes a serious upsell option, woven into the body copy and sidebar.

Registry Power Cleaner Cross-sell Email

File under: Sexy bliss sells.

I sweated a mere 10 rounds of offshore and in-house design comps ("Towel stack next to woman, not across the room! Less background blur! Zig-zag the main graphics!"), re-writing and final sparkle before blessing an absolute winning email cross-sell to McAfee consumers, who ordered the featured third party PC utility in bunches whenever we deployed it.

Happy to spotlight five-way product benefits (header, above-the-fold check-marks, sidebar bullets, narrative long copy, screen shot caption).

Web Attack! Wallscape

Silicon Alley, Manhattan, June 2000: Admiring (or trembling before) the outdoor advertising I arranged for our Web Attack! eMarketing conference—The Internet Goes to Broadway!—produced by Michael Tchong's ICONOCAST. In my bag are 24"x36" event posters, a mite smaller than the six-story version.

Air rights and other legal matters between adjacent building owners almost scuttled the wallscape implementation.

Bryce 2 Print Display Ad

Maybe the best ad creative I ever conceptualized, wrote and placed sold the insanely cool 3D modeling capabilities of Bryce 3D software, developed and marketed by Carpinteria, California-based MetaTools (formerly HSC, later MetaCreations).

Love those adjective call-outs with late-'90s drop shadowing!

Small Print: Gorgeous Cambrian Pipeline main imagery courtesy ArtEffect Design Studio, Los Angeles.

Computer Associates Testimonial Sheets

Channeling my journalism chops, I wrote a product marketing customer profile series—Superior Solutions—to sell Computer Associates accounting and business software. CA's corporate tagline at the time: Software Superior by Design.

Sourcing a hockey puck proved the biggest challenge for the Knicks/Rangers piece; dining at Joyce Goldstein's fondly remembered Square One proved none at all. Spreadsheet-wise, SuperCalc once had a significant market share. Notice the classic Ogilvy on Advertising print ad layouts I asked designers to apply to Royal Court and Greenpeace pieces.

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Running the Numbers: 70 Will Get You 5

I figured it this morning on the gym elliptical.

By 8:15 a.m, Sunday, July 25, 2010, the running of the San Francisco 2nd Half Marathon (I officially registered today), I'll have officially devoted 10 weeks to trimming five minutes—five minutes!—off my half-marathon personal record, set at the US Half, Nov. 1, 2009.

That's my goal and it works out to 14 training days, two weeks' worth of running, jogging, intervals, sprints, hills, sand, cross-training, stretching, recovery and ice, for each minute wiped from my PR.

Those minutes better appreciate the attention.

Independence Day 2010

Today a year ago my mom died. She was 76.

Since then I frame memories in the context of "before" and "after" July 4, 2009. I can't help it.

On Aug. 1, 2009, in my Rapiers Are Go! blog, I wrote:

Just after noon on that Saturday, she left us. A strong, hot wind was blowing outside, "carrying her soul to Heaven"... No more doctors, no more hospitals, no more medicine, no more injections, no more treatment, no more options. No more pain. Free.

Were I to plot my grief over the past 365 days in Excel, I'd see a much longer tail than a standard bell curve. But I no longer cry when I loop over the San Francisco Presidio toward home, driving along Lincoln Boulevard, especially on the backside with poor cellular coverage, where, on a call after leaving work, I invariably told my mom, "Hang on, I'm going to lose you in a few minutes."

But hearing the Shangri-Las' haunting teen tearjerker I Can Never Go Home Any More on the radio yesterday was very hard. "Angels picked her for their friend..." (My college roommate once said I absorbed too much of my emotional state from pop music.)

Three days ago, after running on the beach, I sat on a rock and watched the ebbing waves and misty western sky out past the Golden Gate.

"Mama, can you see this? Can you hear me?"

I ask her things like that, especially when spectacular sunsets break before me. The ones I saw over Burleson, Texas, as she was slipping away from us, broke my heart.

Still they reassured me: there is more to life at the end of it.

One of the last things Mama said to me came the morning of June 28 when she awoke in her hospice room to find me nearby.

"Oh, Greg, why are you here? You can't spend your life like this."

I know that was her way of telling me to let go, to move on.

OK, Mama. But you are with me every single day. I love you.

July 4 is special beyond measure for another family reason.

Fourteen years ago, after watching the fireworks over San Francisco from Coit Tower, I got down on my knee and asked Andrea Noreen Ullman to be my wife.

She smiled but didn't reply. So I asked again, just to be sure.

"Will you marry me?"

"Yes."